Tiny Tim w/Eleanor Barooshian - I Got You Babe Plus The Cake - You Can Have Him

Regular readers know of my fondness for Tiny Tim. I share Bob Dylan's opinion that when Tim passed away we lost a treasure house of musical knowledge.

Here's Tim in a are clip from Peter Yarrow's You Are What You Eat performing a duet of the Sonny and Cher classic I Got You Babe with Tim taking the female lead and Eleanor Barooshian the male part. Although unseen, the backing band is The Band, still known as The Hawks at this point in their career.

Barooshian and Tim used to perform the song on a regular basis at Steve Paul's The Scene club in New York City, which is where Peter Yarrow first saw the number and decided to include it in the film. Tim had a relatively minor role, given that You Are What You Eat was not a film that really featured anyone or much of anything, but after becoming a media hit through his appearances on Laugh-In, Tim became the nominal "star" of the film, and his image used in its marketing. Like some of the other "psychedelic" films made during that period - The Monkees Head and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels come to mind - the largely incoherent You Are What You Eat quickly disappeared from public view, even from the college movie circuit (which is where I saw it in the early `70s).

If you're determined enough to track it down today, you'll probably buy a very blurry nth generation copy which started life as a VHS recording. The quality of the YouTube clip is indicative of what to expect. A pity, since You Are What You Eat also included appearances from The Electric Flag, Frank Zappa, Peter Yarrow, Paul Butterfield, Super Spade, David Crosby, and Barry McGuire, among others.

On his album, God Bless Tiny Tim, Tim would perform both the male and female vocals. The YouTube description notes that Ms. Barooshian (now working under the name "Chelsea Lee") was a member of `60s girl group The Cake. According to their Wikipedia entry their two Decca Records albums are set to be re-released on CD in 2007 by Rev-Ola Records. The surviving two members of The Cake also have a MySpace Page here.



And here is just a wonderful video of The Cake performing You Can Have Him on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in August of 19 and 67...